Interruption, office hours, and tech-driven chatter - DBR 055

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

We had group class yesterday. It was our second of eight group meetings to implement attention compass. Nick is in the class, and he was talking about communication and interruption. Nick's the one that has the office job with teammates and folks that that can reach out to him anytime. He has very little control over who can hit him up. So we were thinging about controlling communication, both electronic and face-to-face. Today, we’re going to talk about the mechanisms for communication, how they turn into traps, and what to do about them. If we let them go, they’ll consume too much of our attention and we won’t have enough left over to do our own stuff. We can feel like we’re ‘doing our job’ but still not getting the important stuff done This might be quite a serious problem in your world At the end of this episode, you’ll have solid strategies for dealing with communication and other information As entrepreneurs, we usually have more control – we get to set our own standard, but we’ve still got to deal with it Information channels

• The purpose of information in our lives – understand our environment and react to it appropriately
• Information channel definition
• Think about the specific purpose of each channel
• Example: my group uses Facebook – do I open up another communication channel?
• default communication channels - we all have one

Categorization schemes

• Categorization scheme – active vs. passive
• Categorization scheme – one-way (consumption) vs. two-way
• (communication)
• Categorization scheme – synchronous vs. asynchronous – related to whether or not I can know if you’re paying attention one of the problems with email and chat is that we must treat it as
• asynchronous communication on an asynchronous channel, I have to communicate more. Two-way channel vs active/passive channel – “most communication channels are active” (really?)

Prompting capacity of information channels

• Many (but not all) information channels can prompt us that new information has arrived – these prompts can be active or passive
• Modern tech – active prompts are typically the default
• Most of the time, we can move it to passive prompts
• Manage the prompts
• We can use turn active channels into less active channels, exert control over the ones that we want to be active in effect, and then move others over to passive

Lots of information channels

• Our organizations have put us in a position where we have multiple, multiple communication channels
• When people are asked they always say, I need more information, despite the fact that after a certain point, more information actually leads to worse decisions
• We're afraid you're going to miss something and look like a goofball.
• Manage the level of activity in each channel (both number and signal)
• Don’t let your technology be a six-year-old child – prune your channels
• Technology - Controlled, it's great. Not controlled, it's a problem.

Sphere of concern and sphere of influence

• We use information channels to explore our sphere of concern
• Our technology and culture have allowed our sphere of concern to completely outstrip our sphere of influence
• Our natural curiosity is a trap here + cultural influence (i.e. ‘awareness’, etc.)

Challenge #1 - conversations about: what channels are we going to use?

• Conversations about what channels we are going to use
• We've got to have help from the other people in our environment to pull this off
• "In our group, here's our communication culture "
• Discipline allows each of the team members to turn off communication channels for a period of time
• Note that this an agreement in your organization, you may not have the lift to move the needle much

Challenge #2

• Switch channels during a communication – pick the proper channel for good communication
• An asynchronous channel is a terrible way to communicate complex information

Challenge #3

• Implementing an “open door” policy (deal with face to face interruptions)
• Make face to face less active – office hours
• You're the only one that's going to enforce it.

Recap